Dennis scooped a CNN article on a Roman gladiator cemetery found in the unlikely place of York, England. (Not, in fact, as unlikely as it initally seems, but that's another story...) So I followed the link on the Facebook recommendation, read the article, then jumped back a bit at the "Dennis ----- recommends this" note at the bottom. I was still logged into Facebook at the time, so the two websites were clearly sharing a cookie (or three) with the earnestness of kindergarten BFFs at milk-break.
Such borrowing of credibility struck me as truly pointless, for a few different reasons:
- It only works when the reader is also logged into Facebook (and perhaps other Web 2.0 hangouts besides). Maybe some folks never log out, but to me that's tantamount to spending all day by the office coffee maker, waiting for your peers to stroll by and validate whatever newspaper/magazine article you're reading.
- Making the media more "social" doesn't address what I consider the fundamental problem with mainstream "news" reporting, namely the too-cozy relationship between reporters--their upper echelons, at any rate--and the reported-upon. Politics is no place for paparazzi, whether you're barbequeing with the Bidens or trading on your Watergate laurels to legitimize Vietnam 2.0 and 2.1.
- The prurient appeal of a Arianna Huffington vs. Ann Coulter locker-room cat-fight notwithstanding, we--speaking broadly, of course--tend to pay most attention to the "reporters" we agree with. Finding our friends in the crowd may provide additional validation of our world-views, but validation is an after-the-fact side-effect. It does nothing to bring in (desperately needed) new readers.
And, most importantly, news is not a popularity contest. Mixing the dynamics of new and old media is a B-movie species mis-matchup that just might be more ridiculous than "Bambi vs. Godzilla." Except not nearly as funny. Not even close.
